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Buried treasure still waits under Egyptian sands

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 21, 2007

SAQQARA, Egypt - Archaeologists unveiled the tombs Tuesday of a pharaonic butler and a scribe that have been buried for more than 3,000 years - proof, they say, that Egypt's sands still have secrets to reveal.

Although archaeologists have been exploring Egypt intensively for more than 150 years, some estimate only one-third of what lies underground in Saqqara, the burial grounds of the Egyptian Old Kingdom capital of Memphis, has been uncovered.

The popular tourist site, about 12 miles south of Cairo, hosts a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes. Its Step Pyramid of King Djoser, the oldest of Egypt's more than 90 pyramids, is the forerunner of the more sophisticated pyramids in Giza.

"The sands of Saqqara reveal lots of secrets," said Egypt's antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, as he showed reporters a 4,000-year-old mud brick tomb that belonged to a scribe of divine records, Ka-Hay, and his wife.

The tomb, along with the butler's limestone grave and two painted coffins, were discovered earlier this year near the Step Pyramid.

Hawass said the scribe's mud brick tomb, which also featured wooden statues and a door with intricate hieroglyphic carvings, "could enrich our knowledge about the people who actually surrounded the kings of Saqqara."

Hawass also unveiled the two wooden coffins, 4,000 years old, that were found south of the Step Pyramid. The rectangular coffins held human-shaped coffins known as anthropoids, containing the mummies of a priest and a woman, who Hawass said was identified in the hieroglyphics as the priest's "girlfriend."

The butler's 3,350-year-old limestone tomb contained murals that showed scenes of people performing rituals and monkeys eating fruit. The blue and orange colors of the paint were surprisingly well preserved.

In December, archaeologists in Saqqara discovered the mummified remains of a doctor who was buried along with surgical tools more than 4,000 years ago. Two months earlier, the graves of three royal dentists were discovered in Saqqara after the arrest of tomb raiders led archaeologists to the site.

[Last modified February 21, 2007, 00:09:15]